Kleenex kid
Mar. 25th, 2007 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
A week and a half later and I still get weepy. But then again, I get weepy pretty easily. I've always been the one to burst into tears over sick kitties or skinned knees or wonderful sunsets or, well, whatever. But I never had a name for it until my grandmother died.
Grandma was widowed far too young -- before I was born. She buried one son not too long after, victim of what we'd call PTSD today, I think, and his own hand. Her other two sons were nearly lost to the military too, between WW2 and Korea neither came out unscathed. Her three daughters (including my mom) took different paths after WW2 ended, branching out into the world and only going home when they needed a break before trying to fly again. But Grandma kept going along, taking care of grandkids, helping her own kids when she could. When my father went off "to find himself", she came to live with us and stayed. I was seven.
All through my childhood Grandma was there. Baking bread. Knitting picture mittens. I can't imagine her with idle hands anymore. She wasn't a whirlwind, mind you, and by the time she came to us she'd reached the age where it was easier to do it herself than teach yet another generation how to clean things up. But her hair was still dark, coming down to her waist on the rare occasions when she let it down. Mostly she wore it in two braids, wrapped around her head like a crown.
When I was fourteen my parents got back together. We moved 500 miles to be with my father, and my grandmother came too. She had her own apartment next door, and as a teenager I remember getting into terrible trouble once because I didn't call when I knew I was going to be late getting home -- not because my Mom was worried, but because Grandma was. I had to go over and apologize at midnight. I took my turn going up to sleep at her house, too, which was good and bad. Good because Grandma would make things like "ranch eggs" for breakfast occasionally. (You cook the sunnyside up eggs in bacon grease and finish the top by scooping the hot grease -- still laced with burnt crunchy bits -- over the yolk with a spoon. She didn't eat them -- her doctor wouldn't have approved. But for a growing teen who had to walk a mile to school they were wonderful.) Bad because I grew to fear waking up one morning to find that she hadn't wakened too.
I used to watch her there, lying in bed, waiting to see if the covers would move. I never dreamed then that I was practicing for what would come.
In 1980, I went to England with the Air National Guard, and when I came home I found out that Grandma had been diagnosed with colon cancer. At that time, the doctors pretty much said, "Oh, she's had a good long innings," and refused to do more. At least not for a woman who was over eighty. They'd done a colostomy, earlier, but that was about it. So my mom got a hospital bed, we set up a room off the living room (which had a sliding door, so you could open it up and Grandma could be part of what was happening) and my oldest sister and I lived at home and took turns with my mom at caring for her. Mom invited all the cousins to come if they could and most of them did, but it was mostly us taking care of Grandma.
She died before Christmas. I don't remember the date, and I can't tell you why, I just don't. I wasn't home that night -- I had guard drill, and I was staying with one of the sergeants so that no one would have to drive me to the base in the morning. But we got a call, and I went home.
My aunt had come too, she lived close enough. And while we were waiting for the funeral home people to come I remember her patting Grandma's hand and saying, "You're getting cold, Ma."
Later, while I was sitting on the couch going through another box of kleenex, because I couldn't stop crying, even though everyone else was sort of dry eyed, my aunt came to me and gave me a hug, and said that she'd been the "kleenex kid" in her generation too.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately.
When you're a kleenex kid, you have to learn how to cry unabashedly, because you're not going to learn how not to cry. Last funeral I went to I ended up with a pocketful of soggy tissue, and I probably looked more upset than the family did. I'm sitting here now with a wet face and a sniffly nose just thinking about how we lost Grandma, and that hurt is so old you'd think I'd be completely used to it by now.
When you're a kleenex kid you have to think about whether or not to go to a sad movie with friends or alone. Or at least know which friends will only give you the right amount of teasing afterwards. (I have good luck in that regard.)
When you're a kleenex kid you cry when you read books -- and not always at the sad or scary bits either. There's a fairly minor children's book called Happily After All that I love just because the girl in the story cries at the same place I do when she's reading Kate Seredy's The Chestry Oak.
When you're a kleenex kid you gradually learn that sometimes its better to cry a while before you wash your face and move along. You learn that you can laugh through tears -- and usually will. I can't remember Grandma dying without remembering the way she used to bang the lid on the commode we had placed by her bed when she wanted a hand in the middle of the night. Nor her astringent commentary about that commode, comparing it to the carved cabinet she hid pennies in when she was a very small child.
When you're a kleenex kid you get total strangers on the train asking if you're all right, and you can't explain that you are, mostly, it's just that you're crying. But it's nice of them to ask.
When you're a kleenex kid you cry for total strangers when you see them staring blankly at the ruins of their lives on a television news report. You wish there was a way to hug them through the glass, and know that a hug is never enough and that good wishes will have to do.
I can't imagine not being a kleenex kid. I don't think I know how.
Grandma was widowed far too young -- before I was born. She buried one son not too long after, victim of what we'd call PTSD today, I think, and his own hand. Her other two sons were nearly lost to the military too, between WW2 and Korea neither came out unscathed. Her three daughters (including my mom) took different paths after WW2 ended, branching out into the world and only going home when they needed a break before trying to fly again. But Grandma kept going along, taking care of grandkids, helping her own kids when she could. When my father went off "to find himself", she came to live with us and stayed. I was seven.
All through my childhood Grandma was there. Baking bread. Knitting picture mittens. I can't imagine her with idle hands anymore. She wasn't a whirlwind, mind you, and by the time she came to us she'd reached the age where it was easier to do it herself than teach yet another generation how to clean things up. But her hair was still dark, coming down to her waist on the rare occasions when she let it down. Mostly she wore it in two braids, wrapped around her head like a crown.
When I was fourteen my parents got back together. We moved 500 miles to be with my father, and my grandmother came too. She had her own apartment next door, and as a teenager I remember getting into terrible trouble once because I didn't call when I knew I was going to be late getting home -- not because my Mom was worried, but because Grandma was. I had to go over and apologize at midnight. I took my turn going up to sleep at her house, too, which was good and bad. Good because Grandma would make things like "ranch eggs" for breakfast occasionally. (You cook the sunnyside up eggs in bacon grease and finish the top by scooping the hot grease -- still laced with burnt crunchy bits -- over the yolk with a spoon. She didn't eat them -- her doctor wouldn't have approved. But for a growing teen who had to walk a mile to school they were wonderful.) Bad because I grew to fear waking up one morning to find that she hadn't wakened too.
I used to watch her there, lying in bed, waiting to see if the covers would move. I never dreamed then that I was practicing for what would come.
In 1980, I went to England with the Air National Guard, and when I came home I found out that Grandma had been diagnosed with colon cancer. At that time, the doctors pretty much said, "Oh, she's had a good long innings," and refused to do more. At least not for a woman who was over eighty. They'd done a colostomy, earlier, but that was about it. So my mom got a hospital bed, we set up a room off the living room (which had a sliding door, so you could open it up and Grandma could be part of what was happening) and my oldest sister and I lived at home and took turns with my mom at caring for her. Mom invited all the cousins to come if they could and most of them did, but it was mostly us taking care of Grandma.
She died before Christmas. I don't remember the date, and I can't tell you why, I just don't. I wasn't home that night -- I had guard drill, and I was staying with one of the sergeants so that no one would have to drive me to the base in the morning. But we got a call, and I went home.
My aunt had come too, she lived close enough. And while we were waiting for the funeral home people to come I remember her patting Grandma's hand and saying, "You're getting cold, Ma."
Later, while I was sitting on the couch going through another box of kleenex, because I couldn't stop crying, even though everyone else was sort of dry eyed, my aunt came to me and gave me a hug, and said that she'd been the "kleenex kid" in her generation too.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately.
When you're a kleenex kid, you have to learn how to cry unabashedly, because you're not going to learn how not to cry. Last funeral I went to I ended up with a pocketful of soggy tissue, and I probably looked more upset than the family did. I'm sitting here now with a wet face and a sniffly nose just thinking about how we lost Grandma, and that hurt is so old you'd think I'd be completely used to it by now.
When you're a kleenex kid you have to think about whether or not to go to a sad movie with friends or alone. Or at least know which friends will only give you the right amount of teasing afterwards. (I have good luck in that regard.)
When you're a kleenex kid you cry when you read books -- and not always at the sad or scary bits either. There's a fairly minor children's book called Happily After All that I love just because the girl in the story cries at the same place I do when she's reading Kate Seredy's The Chestry Oak.
When you're a kleenex kid you gradually learn that sometimes its better to cry a while before you wash your face and move along. You learn that you can laugh through tears -- and usually will. I can't remember Grandma dying without remembering the way she used to bang the lid on the commode we had placed by her bed when she wanted a hand in the middle of the night. Nor her astringent commentary about that commode, comparing it to the carved cabinet she hid pennies in when she was a very small child.
When you're a kleenex kid you get total strangers on the train asking if you're all right, and you can't explain that you are, mostly, it's just that you're crying. But it's nice of them to ask.
When you're a kleenex kid you cry for total strangers when you see them staring blankly at the ruins of their lives on a television news report. You wish there was a way to hug them through the glass, and know that a hug is never enough and that good wishes will have to do.
I can't imagine not being a kleenex kid. I don't think I know how.